


What You Carry and What You Leave Behind

by meganbagels (Meganbagels)



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Healing, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-25 11:08:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22495093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meganbagels/pseuds/meganbagels
Summary: Bill Adama's solitude is disturbed by a visit from Ms. Frizzle and her class. Old wounds still hurt, but sometimes we can't heal alone.'He always wished that Laura was still with him, but he felt it more sharply now. She had been incalculably better than him with the unforeseen. One of the many problems with war was that even with the best of intentions, after a while, everything becomes a target and everyone seems like an enemy. Laura had always been able to remind him that the only purpose for war was for it to end and to make a safe home for their people.Adama leaned heavily against the wall, trying to make a decision. “What would you do, Laura?” he muttered to himself.He could almost see the amused smile on her face and hear her voice saying: “Try hello. That’s usually a good place to start.”'
Relationships: Valerie Frizzle & William Adama
Comments: 6
Kudos: 4





	What You Carry and What You Leave Behind

The first thing Adama noticed was the sound of laughter coming from west of his cabin and steadily growing closer. The second thing he noticed was that it was the wholly unselfconscious laughter of children. He shook his head slightly and listened again. Surely that wasn’t what he was hearing. It was nearly alien in its unfamiliarity, his mind struggling to relearn the sound. He’d purposefully chosen to live far from the main colony, refusing Lee’s offers and the sympathetic looks of his former crew. No one reasonable would allow children to travel so far from the colony.

The third thing he noticed was that he’d opened the drawer beside his chair and was reaching for a weapon. He flinched away from the cold metal. On New Earth, William ‘Bill’ Adama wasn’t expected to be a military leader anymore, no longer admiral first and everything else a distant second. Still, the habits of years at war were dying a slow death during these months of peace. The cabin was finished now. He’d taken time to make a proper grave marker for Laura. He’d even started a small garden, fumbling through his first growing season. He thought he’d found some semblance of a civilian remaining in himself. No, he wouldn’t allow himself to greet this sound with weapons fire--not initially at least.

He crept out of his chair and peered out the small side window to see a group of children playing by the lakeside. Several had sticks, poking them into the mud at the banks then crouching down to watch the mud refill the holes and giggling at the sucking squelch it made. These children, if they were actually children, didn’t look anything like those from the Galactica. They wore bright colors, their clothes looked new, not a single sign of mending or repurposing. More tellingly, they didn’t look nervously around as they played, or startle at the wind--they simply were. They looked young in a way he hadn’t believed he’d ever see again.

The unguarded joy of them made his heart clench. Sometimes it stung him like this, the bone-deep loss of so much, all the many things that survival entailed sacrificing, in one way or another, momentarily laid bare. He had posed the thought to his own people, saying, “Maybe it would have been better for us to have died quickly back on the colonies with our families instead of dying out here slowly in the emptiness of dark space,” before convincing them of a New Earth and persuading them to hope for that future. In those early days he had found it simple enough to plow ahead as a survivor, but now on New Earth with time to feel the shape of this grief, he wondered if he’d spoken too glibly. Surviving wasn’t easy--the loss of Zak had taught him that each day since--but he’d never truly known how steadily it gnawed at the heart. In some of his darker hours, he’d privately envied the dead for having escaped that particular burden, and felt shame for his weakness.

The trill--yodel really--of a woman cut through his thoughts. He twisted his neck to try and see her approach better, but he needn’t have bothered. She was unmissable with her riot of reddish curls barely contained in a bun and her loud knee-length dress billowing around her with every step.

She threw up her hands in an expansive gesture to the landscape around her. “Alright class! Who can tell me where we are?” Her voice carried; so much so that it startled off a few birds at the far end of the lake.

The children looked up from their activities and gathered around her, several raising their hands. He studied them as closely as he could from his awkward window view. It was possible these were Cylon children, or something else entirely: a vision, a hallucination, an alien species, a sign that he was dead and had entered into some strange afterlife. How would he even know anymore?

A child in a red hat pointed to his cabin; Adama ducked down. The voice of the woman rang out, “Well, let’s go and ask!”

He stiffened, feeling the urge to reach for a weapon again, but tamped it down. He hadn’t expected strangers on a planet that was uninhabited, and incautious strangers at that. How was

he supposed to respond to this? He always wished that Laura was still with him, but he felt it more sharply now. She had been incalculably better than him with the unforeseen. One of the many problems with war was that even with the best of intentions, after a while, everything becomes a target and everyone seems like an enemy. Laura had always been able to remind him that the only purpose for war was for it to end and to make a safe home for their people.

Adama leaned heavily against the wall, trying to make a decision. “What would you do, Laura?” he muttered to himself.

He could almost see the amused smile on her face and hear her voice saying: “Try hello. That’s usually a good place to start.”

He pulled on his cleanest shirt and ran his fingers through his further whitened hair. He hadn’t bothered to cut it or to shave in months. He made an attempt at smoothing down his beard as the sound of shuffling feet crowded around his front door.

“Go on Wanda, it was your idea,” a nervous voice urged.

“Fine, Arnold, I will! I’m not afraid.”

“It’s okay to be afraid, and it’s okay to try things, kids! You never know until you give it a whirl!” the woman declared.

A tentative knock came. Adama took a breath, trying to remember how the him of years ago would have done this. He opened the door and a small girl with black bobbed hair looked up at him. She immediately stuck out a hand for him to shake. He tensed at the sudden movement.

“Hello, sir, sorry to bother you. My name is Wanda. I wanted to ask you a question.”

Adama took the hand and carefully shook it. Had children always been so small, seemed so unbearably delicate?

He cleared his throat and tried to smile in welcome. “Hello Wanda. I’m Adm-I’m Bill. Pleased to meet you.” He waited for a follow up, but Wanda bit her lip and looked around.

A boy with glasses and short curly hair put a hand on her shoulder. “Do you--do you want me to ask?” he gulped.

Adama looked up from the exchange and caught the eye of the woman in charge. He could see now that the pattern on her dress was swirls of water and tiny embroidered bacteria. She winked cheerfully at him. Definitely not from here and definitely not his people. He felt his jaw tighten, but kept calm. Whatever was happening here would reveal itself--he could deal with it then, or it would kill him and would no longer be an issue for him to be concerned with. He reminded himself, as long as he didn’t mention the colony location or put his people at risk, it would be fine.

The boy looked at him nervously, saying “Sir, we’re on a field trip to learn about geography. We’re wondering if you could tell us where we are?”

He smiled slightly. His people or not, he still recognized that anxious posture. The part of him that remembered dealing with frightened young cadets reached for something to say. “That’s an excellent question, young man. What’s your name?”

The boy’s face colored at the praise. “My name is Arnold.”

Adama took a second before deciding to answer as broadly as possible, “Well Arnold, not everywhere here has a name yet, but you’re on the planet Earth. New Earth.”

“New Earth!?” the entire group said as one.

The woman stuck out a hand. “I’m Ms. Frizzle, and these are my brave and intrepid students! We’d all like to learn more if you have time to talk to us!”

Ah yes, a teacher. Of course she was their teacher. Why was the universe always sending him teachers to shake up his life? He shook her outstretched hand. “I think I might have time.” He adopted the most casual demeanor he could before asking, “So, are you from here?”

Instantly one of the children at the back yelled proudly, “No, we’re from the future!”

He felt something leap in his chest before cautioning himself that this was the word of a child, completely implausible, and likely an outright lie in any case. “Really,” Adama said flatly, glancing at Ms. Frizzle who nodded blithely in confirmation.

He felt sweat prickling the back of his neck. In the wake of everything else, were beings from the future so far fetched…? “How far in the future?”

“A lot! A million trillion years!” A boy with dark hair answered.

Ms. Frizzle shrugged cheerfully. “We’re still working on large numbers. I’m not sure how far back in time we went--quite a few thousand years at least, the bus can be a little secretive sometimes. Perhaps if we do some investigating we can find out, right class?”

He shut his eyes tightly. This was madness, complete and total madness. But some (no doubt insane) part of him felt relief. Of course there couldn’t be time travel, there couldn’t be a group of children from the future on his doorstep, there couldn’t be a woman standing here discussing it like it was the weather. Even so, the momentary relief of believing that his people would survive and the colony would make it was immense. Maybe he hadn’t failed, maybe it had been worth it all and they would live beyond the still-aching wounds of their survival. He took off his glasses, hands shaking, and pinched the bridge of his nose trying to maintain self-control.

“Class, why don’t you find some rocks we can examine and grab a few water and soil samples! We’ll be right there,” Ms. Frizzle announced.

Adama watched the children run off, shouting excitedly. Ms. Frizzle breezed past him into his cabin and started water boiling.

“You seemed like you needed a moment. The class and I can go, of course! We don’t want to be a bother!”

“No, don’t go!” Adama clenched his teeth. He hadn’t expected to blurt that out to this stranger.

He saw her eyebrows shoot up at the force of his reply but she moved to the table, taking a seat and patting the seat next to her. “Maybe you’d like to talk about it? Talking through something can be helpful, I find.”

He took the seat opposite her, shrugging, “I don’t think there’s much to talk about now.”

A chameleon appeared on Ms. Frizzle’s shoulder and looked at him skeptically. Ms. Frizzle said, “From what I know of you that seems quite unlikely, but it’s alright if you don’t want to talk. We can just sit here.”

He snorted dismissively. “What do you know of me?”

“I know a few things. Perks of time travel, you see,” she smiled.

He didn’t offer a response and she didn’t press further. The kettle pinged and clicked in the background as it heated on the stove. Adama noticed the chameleon twitching its tail and staring hungrily at a bee that had wandered in and was now exploring the table.

Ms. Frizzle gently chided the chameleon just as it started to stick out its tongue hopefully. “No Liz, I’m afraid not. This is a special bee.” The chameleon deflated slightly and retracted its tongue. Adama momentarily narrowed his eyes at the chameleon, named Liz evidently, who looked uncannily aware of what was being said to it before judging that it wasn’t a threat and seemed mostly interested in eating.

“What makes it special?” Adama asked despite himself.

Her eyes lit up in excitement and she gestured for him to look closer at the bee. “It’s a Eucera, a long-horned bee. Notice the large antennae? It’s the bee that pollinates the Ophrys apifera, the bee orchid. It’s a self-pollinating orchid mostly, but the orchid has evolved to attract this bee in particular to help pollination.”

“So the bee isn’t special.”

“I wouldn’t say that at all. The orchid thinks it’s special. And we won’t know how special this bee is if we don’t give it a chance.” She blew gently on the bee prompting it to buzz lazily out the door. “And we certainly weren’t expecting to meet anyone as special as you today.”

He grimaced. “Oh yes, an old man living in a lonely cabin.”

“How would that make you less special?” Ms. Frizzle looked at him with achingly sincere curiosity. The kettle whistled sharply.

He didn’t have an answer for that question, but she didn’t bother waiting for one. She poured hot water into a mug then plunked it down in front of him. In the mug was a teabag, the little paper tab hanging from a string over the side. Where had she gotten this from? He hadn’t seen a teabag in years and certainly hadn’t expected to see one again for the rest of his life. It wasn’t particularly unique, it looked like every other teabag he’d remembered from before, but he couldn’t help stroking the little paper tab, reassuring himself that it was real. Ms. Frizzle sat down at the table again, keeping her class in view as they methodically picked up rocks and showed them to one another, carefully selecting the most interesting ones.

Adama cleared his throat awkwardly. “What are you then? Are you Cylons? Aliens? Some sort of hallucination I’m having?”

Ms. Frizzle pressed a finger to her lips in thought before answering, “We’re learners and adventurers. And no, no Cylons, at least as far as I’m aware--they can be difficult to spot of course. Although I’m sure Cylons need to learn about science, too.”

“They usually seemed to know more than enough to get by,” he murmured bitterly.

Liz crawled down Ms. Frizzle’s shoulder, sidled up to Adama’s hands cupped around the mug and patted his thumb consolingly with one small foot. He looked intently at his tea, trying to ignore the tiny sympathetic pats and avoid getting into this any further.

“We’re both deeply sorry for your losses,” Ms. Frizzle offered gently. “I’m also proud of what you’ve done.” 

Adama recoiled angrily. “What do you know about it? Sure, we’re here now but the price… I wouldn’t have asked my worst enemy to pay it. We made mistakes. I made mistakes. Mistakes that I can’t take back, that cost good people everything.” Adama pointed at the children combing the lakeside. “I’m looking at those children out there and they are nothing like the children from the Galactica. The children, our children, haven’t felt ground under their feet until this year. They’re scared, they don’t know how to be on a planet, and their parents are finally realizing that this is it. There is no new civilization unless they build it. How many generations do you think it will take to be where we were again? How many to outlive the cost of this war?”

Ms. Frizzle grasped his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze, “I don’t know. Neither do you. But you’ve given them a chance to find out those answers.”

A quiet cough from the doorway startled him. Ms. Frizzle gave his hand a final pat and stood up to welcome the student awkwardly scuffing her buckle shoes against the door jamb. “Phoebe! Did you have a question? I hope you’re all finding some exciting rocks!”

Phoebe pulled at the hem of her red jumper dress. “I had a question, but then I heard you talking, I’m sorry for listening, I know it’s not nice to listen to other people’s conversations, but I wanted to say something.”

Adama turned his seat to face her, trying to stay close to eye level. He hadn’t been addressed this earnestly by a child since Zak and Lee had just been starting school. He’d never felt at ease with kids and those piercing looks that laid you bare. He could stomach disappointing a lot of people--had, in fact, stomached it near constantly--but children were a different kind of censure entirely.

Phoebe marched up to him and gathered herself up to say, “It’s okay to make mistakes.”

Adama looked at her gently. “Some mistakes are...bigger than others.”

“I know that!” she said, balling her fists at her side in frustration. “But mistakes, they’re mistakes! They’re not because you want bad things to happen, or because anyone deserved for things to go wrong! They’re something that happens when you’re learning. When you take chances, it’s messy and you make mistakes, and you get better. I know you made mistakes, big mistakes, and they--they sound like they hurt. But you made mistakes and it’s okay to--it’s okay to make them. They don’t mean that you’re bad.”

Adama felt his face crumple, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes, before he realized that he was openly crying in front of a child. He covered his face with a palm trying to contain rising sobs. A soft weight wrapped around his arm--Phoebe was hugging it tightly.

She said quietly, as though admitting a deeply held secret, “It’s okay. Sometimes I cry when I make mistakes too.”

The sobs wracked him as he sagged against the table, feeling Phoebe lay her small head against his shoulder. He shouldn’t do this. He shouldn’t fold like this, and not in front of this child, but the wave of grief rolled over him and bore him down into its depths. Each report he’d signed after a crewmember had died. Each argument with Laura when they could have been holding one another, enjoying the precious little time they had. The loss of Earth, the soul-hollowing fear he’d carried for years that he would be the death of everyone he was responsible for. The loss of Zak, his baby boy, his son, whose grave he couldn’t ever visit again. Lee, the son he’d never be able to make up all his mistakes to. The son who had held him as he cried over Saul when he should have been holding Lee through every agony life threw at him. Carolanne, his wife who he’d let down so thoroughly and repeatedly. Each bad decision that had cost lives, the people he’d hurt, the future of humanity that was going to be a struggle for each step forward. The memories swarmed him, each one sinking in its own blade. It hurt. No, hurt was such a small word for what it was. It was shattering. As though each thing that held him together had been torn out and he was being unmade fragment by fragment. And oh gods, whatever was left at the bottom of that… if only there could be nothing left. If only.

Adama could feel himself drifting back to the present. He had forgotten how much pain there was in weeping, each breath jarring his lungs and scraping his throat raw. His head pounded, he could hardly see through the tears, and his whole body ached. It felt endless, like a grief that would devour him, which maybe he deserved. With each inhale he felt his body growing heavier, the exhaustion of weeping overriding the pain and grief. His sobs lessened slowly into hitching breaths. The weight on his arm had left, instead he could feel Phoebe on the floor beside his leg, her head leaning on his thigh.

“I told her she didn’t need to stay, but she wanted to,” Ms. Frizzle said with a quiet smile.

Adama opened his eyes slowly, trying to ignore their throbbing. He scrubbed at matted lashes and took the handkerchief that Ms. Frizzle offered, blowing his nose. He straightened in his chair and looked down at the top of Phoebe’s head.

“Thank you. You are a very wise young lady, Phoebe.” His voice bumped over the words.

Phoebe tilted back to look up at him. “I know and you’re welcome. I learned it from Ms. Frizzle, but I know adults are bad at listening to each other sometimes. Do you feel better?”

“I do feel better,” he admitted. He felt broken and jagged, yet better. He had touched that grief, held its raw and bloody mass in his hands, and come out the other side.

“I’m glad,” Phoebe smiled broadly. She stood up, shaking her dress. “I’m going to go see if Carlos found anything. He promised he’d tell me if he found any bugs!”

Ms. Frizzle nodded in understanding. “Phoebe, thank you for teaching Bill about mistakes. You explained it wonderfully!”

Phoebe shrugged as she left, “You’re good at teaching us about them,”

Ms. Frizzle looked wonderingly after her. “I love it when they surprise me!”

Adama took a sip of his now lukewarm tea and cleared his throat. “Thank you. For the handkerchief. And for coming here.”

“Oh, no trouble! Thank you for letting us wander around and look at all the rocks and water!”

“So you’re really from another time, then.”

The corner of her mouth turned up. “I’m from a lot of other times, but my students are all from a particular time that’s a very long ways from now.”

“We make it then. Humanity--we make it.”

Ms. Frizzle beamed. “Most definitely you do!” Liz gave a thumbs up.

He tentatively touched her wrist and looked into her eyes, attempting to make clear what a gift this knowledge felt like. “I’m grateful to know that.”

She laid a warm hand on top of his. “I’m glad we could give you that news. I’m afraid we should probably be off now! I think the class has probably poked enough mud and caught enough insects for today.”

“Yes, the mud does look very poked.” A line of sticks had been placed in a makeshift barricade along one of the banks of the lake.

Ms. Frizzle laughed. “It certainly does! I bet Keesha did this. She’s been very interested in construction and physics lately.”

“Will you visit again? I did not manage to explain a single thing about the history of this planet. I’ll prepare a little next time,” He offered. 

“I think we found everything we came for. We don’t often visit the same place again, unless something unusual happens.”

He gave a faintly regretful sigh. “Ah. Well, allow me to walk you all back to your ship, then.”

“That would be lovely!”

The sun was creeping towards the western horizon and the moon was already high in the sky as he closed the cabin door and followed Ms. Frizzle out into the shaggy grass around the lake. The children gathered around their teacher to show her what they’d found, each object and discovery earning praise and one of her delighted grins. Several of the children held up specimens for his approval too, so he congratulated them as he remembered praising crewmembers on a job well done. Phoebe argued passionately that the bug she’d found needed to come home with her, but Ms. Frizzle gently suggested that perhaps the bug had a life here and might not enjoy time travel very much. Phoebe sighed and put the insect on a blade of grass.

Ms. Frizzle herded the group over a hill and down into a small valley where a bizarre ship stood waiting. His eyes went wide. It was nothing like any ship he’d ever seen before. It just looked like a bus. The bus honked in greeting.

“What is this ship?”

“It’s a T.A.R.D.I.S. Although I’ve modified it over the years.”

He nodded earnestly, as though her words made any sense to him. “I see. What’s a Tardis?”

“It’s an acronym, but really it’s just a fussy name for a time machine,” She shrugged cheerfully, “All aboard!”

The children climbed in, chattering excitedly. Wanda shook his hand goodbye. Phoebe hugged his middle and smiled proudly at him like he had succeeded at a task she’d set. He felt a little tremble of hopeful pride. Arnold paused at the door to the bus and looked questioningly at him. “Are you coming with us?”

From the pilot’s seat Ms. Frizzle gasped, “Arnold, what an excellent idea! You’re of course welcome to come with us, Bill. The principal is always asking if we have enough chaperones on field trips!”

Adama looked up at the top of the hill, beyond which was his new home, beyond that the settlement of New Earth and the people he’d led here.

Arnold followed his gaze. “Are you scared? I get scared a lot. I get scared when we do new things, but usually it’s okay. Sometimes it’s even really great. I’m still scared though,” he admitted sheepishly as he mounted the bus steps.

Adama nodded to Arnold, “I understand. And you’re right, I am scared.” He climbed in after him. “But I don’t think I’m going to let that stop me from trying.”

“That’s the spirit!” Ms. Frizzle crowed as she closed the door and started up the bus. “Alright, seatbelts everyone!” 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for choosing Ms. Frizzle and Bill Adama and for giving me this opportunity to make fic for you. It means so much. Thank you to Dan for the vote of confidence on this one and for his exceptional editing skills. Seriously, any mistakes you see in this are definitely mine.


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